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Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

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Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#91

Post by ptd »

kahnjw wrote: post #71
arien wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the case of the device being someone else's. I don't have any Google or Amazon smart listeners, so I never accepted them. Yet if my voice is in any of these recordings, well...

How do you square that with a security cameras? Do you need to consent every time you enter a space secured by them?

I don’t believe there are laws prohibiting video surveillance in public by businesses. Some states have laws prohibiting filming in locations where one expects privacy. Other states allow filming in private spaces as long as the business notifies employees and customers they are being filmed.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#92

Post by gopher2 »

Of course they are! There are user researchers, people looking for spam and abuse, people tagging data, among other things who are absolutely looking at your: private messages, search queries, profiles viewed, Alexa conversations, Tinder messages, bookmarks, call history, purchase history, geolocation history... and on and on. I guess there are a lot of news stories left to write on this topic.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#93

Post by arien »

kahnjw wrote: post #71
arien wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the case of the device being someone else's. I don't have any Google or Amazon smart listeners, so I never accepted them. Yet if my voice is in any of these recordings, well...

How do you square that with a security cameras? Do you need to consent every time you enter a space secured by them?

There are some rules concerning security cameras as well. I recently found out that private CCTV (at least in the UK) can't record public areas (e.g only your porch). Someone got sued over this recently.

There have been some stories in HN about opting out of face recognition as well. Maybe the laws for video are different as the other reply says, but there are privacy concerns in there as well.

edit: here's a list of GDPR fines (not comprehensive as I only see 2 in the UK). If you filter by CCTV you'll find a couple of examples from Austria: http://enforcementtracker.com/

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#94

Post by guyzero »

rickyc091 wrote: post #86

Now it's making me wonder if the light on my Google Home Mini is on if that means it's passively listening to me. I always do a hard reboot since the indicator light suddenly stays active for a long period of time.

That means you have a notification: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7073219?hl=en

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#95

Post by gringoDan »

I think the responses to this can be broken down into a 2x2 matrix: level of concern vs. understanding of technology.

1) Don't understand ML; not concerned - "I have nothing to hide."

2) Don't understand ML; concerned - "I bought this device and now people are spying on me!"

3) Understand ML; not concerned - "Of course, Google needs to label its training data."

4) Understand ML; concerned - "How can we train models/collect data in an ethical way?"

To me, category 3 is the most dangerous. Tech workers have a responsibility not just understand the technologies that they work with, but also educate themselves on the societal implications of those technologies. And as others have pointed out, this extends beyond home speakers to any voice-enabled device in general.

In conversations about this with engineers the response I've gotten is essentially: "Just trust that we [Google/Amazon/etc.] handle the data correctly." This is worrying.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#96

Post by nicky0 »

50656E6973 wrote: post #65
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #41

I mean. Of course they are. Do you expect to be able to do any meaningful level of training on data that hasn't been properly labeled? At some point, a human has to go in and correct the software when the software gets it wrong. If you want services that do what Google Home does, you have to have this. Even with that, I'm sure that the engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more then once, or where some on…

>This is only creepy if you don't understand how the software works. No, its only creepy if you're not sure whether or not conversations had in the "privacy" of your own home are being listened to by a faceless person

1) We are not talking about private conversations. We are talking about interactions between the device and its user.

2) Barring some horrible accident or deformity, the person probably has a face.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#97

Post by matt_heimer »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #41

I mean. Of course they are. Do you expect to be able to do any meaningful level of training on data that hasn't been properly labeled? At some point, a human has to go in and correct the software when the software gets it wrong. If you want services that do what Google Home does, you have to have this. Even with that, I'm sure that the engineers are flagging voice requests that happen more then once, or where some on…

It is still slightly creepy because of which humans are doing it. Is there any reason that these systems can't ask the users themselves about the accuracy of the speech to text conversion? Not everyone would do it but a percentage would.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#98

Post by AgloeDreams »

electrograv wrote: post #15

So Google’s response is (paraphrased as fairly as I can while removing the sugar-coating): ’Yes, we hire people to listen in to and transcribe some conversations from the private homes of our customers (so as improve our speech recognition engines); but the recordings aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.’ Even assuming they have only the purest intentions here, I still don’t understand how they can p…

Even then, the voice print of someone is obviously ID-able right?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#99

Post by ethbro »

bastawhiz wrote: post #53
arien wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not to be anywhere near anyone else's listening devices. Isn't there a law in some US states that there needs to be consent before recording someone? How does this fit in and who would be held responsible, the owner of the listening device or the company behind it?

You already consented by agreeing to the terms of service. If someone else is talking to their smart device while you're talking, it's ostensibly their responsibility. There's no reasonable laws that prevent you from being overheard in the back of a recorded phone conversation

(IANAL, but) Not accurate in the US.

Most states are either one party or two party consent states. One party = you can unilaterally record anything (not sure this includes things you're not actively involved with, e.g. spying). Two party = you must have consent of everyone in the recording.

By a plain reading of two party consent statutes, people are in violation if their home speaker records a guest without obtaining consent.

I'm sure Google and Amazon's lawyers would try to weasel out of compliance via claimed anonymization, but that's definitely not the spirit of the law.

Old, but thorough: http://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/LAWS-ON-RE...

You're also going to bump up into specific wording on whether a given statute covers only telephone conversations or oral conversations, as most of these are phone wiretap laws that may or may not have been worked ambiguously.

Additionally, there are federal statutes that likely also bear.

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